Killing the feature creep before the feature creep kills me.

I don't know about you, but I always come up with a super simple game idea that will take 2 weeks to bring to fruition, and will probably be pretty cool in the end. Nice simple, cut-n-dried game mechanics, clean graphics, moderate level of content -- you know.

The next day, I don't even know what the original game premise was, and I'm so excited to be developing the next killer indie game that everyone in the world will be talking about. I have game mechanics so complicated that I can't even make sense of them on paper, my plans for the graphics would take a professional team of animators, modelers and sprite artists approximately three years to complete, and I'm as happy as a skunk in a manure pile.

Until three weeks later when I realize that I'm an idiot.

This happened with a platform jumper that I was developing. I just now realized that I'm an idiot.

The entire original premise: A simple exploration game in which the player controls a little dude who can run up walls and jump and run.

The feature creep's idea in a nutshell: A complex exploration into the geopolitical workings of a civilization of beings who live on the surface of a planet and of a civilization of beings who live on islands orbiting the planet in the air above the aforementioned beings who live on the surface of the planet. You can fly also, in addition to being able to run up walls and what not.

I was so bogged down by the new features that I had to implement that I almost gave up on the whole thing. Then I remembered this one really important fact: "Hey, I'm an idiot! but also: "I HATE THE FEATURE CREEP!"

I proceeded to cut my plotline from a document 3000 words strong and growing daily to one simple line:

"Discover the ends of the earth."

Beautiful. Elegant. Simple . . . indie. I also completely nixed flying even though most of the work was done. The problem was that flying made everything 5x more complex. Plus, strange bugs reared their ugly heads as soon as I started messing with the flying code.

I've killed the feature creep and the Volkswagen sized leech attached to by chest has been surgically removed. THAT was a metaphor.

No one reads a blog that doesn't have at least one picture:

UNEK

Now that you saw the pictures, go ahead and read the rest of it. [encouraging] Its slightly witty! :D [/encouraging]

*goes to bed hoping that tomorrow the idea for Unek will be as simple as it is today* <--- Longest self narration to occur in a blog for aproximately 5 years.